Talking about Scottish culture so you don't have to

Gordons Alive!!!

The Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2010 is well under way and there are some great artists showing their wares including Linder, Jim Colquhoun, David Malkovich, Katy Dove, and many more. For a full programme of events and exhibitions click here .

Lots of interesting stuff, but the two musts for me are David Shrigley, who has an exhibition of sculpture at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and whose work I looked at in a previous post (see The Boy David…), and Douglas Gordon. Gordon is perhaps best known for his film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, a collaboration with Phillipe Pareno which followed French footballing genius and headbanger Zizou as he played for Real Madrid against Villareal. 17 cameras are trained on Zidane only as the match progresses and it is a fascinating study of a man at the top of his game, all set to a Mogwai soundtrack. In case I haven’t described that as well as I hoped, here’s the trailer:

Gordon’s exhibition at this festival is an update of his 24 Hour Psycho which is showing at the Tramway until the 3rd of May. If you’ve never heard of this piece it is exactly as it sounds, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho slowed down to two frames per second rather than the normal 24, stretching the running time of the film to 24 hours. So, if you time your visit precisely, you can luxuriate in your favourite parts of the film such as the ‘mother reveal’, the brilliant ending, and, of course, that shower scene. Here’s a brief clip of that very scene done in the Gordon style:

You may think ‘what’s the point’, and if you do then I’m not going to try and convince you here, but if you’re around Glasgow over the next week give something in the festival a go. No medium gets as much stick as modern or visual art, but like any other form there will be things you like and things you cannot stand. Some will make you think, others simply smile, and others perhaps provoke anger, but you don’t know which is which unless you sample widely. If you’re still unconvinced that there is anything for you at this festival I’ll leave you with one of David Shrigley’s sculptures that will surely change your mind: